


i wanna be your girlfriend

by nonbinarynino



Series: rest and relaxation [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Developing Relationship, Moving On, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 03:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: There isn't supposed to be a second date.





	i wanna be your girlfriend

There isn't supposed to be a second date. It's not that you hadn't had fun on the first one, because oh, you had, but you know that the negatives outweigh the positives. You're younger, dumber, traumatized and freshly burnt. (_The worst thing about being led on is that you don't realize what it is until your mouth is bitter and your eyes burn.) _A relationship just won't work, but you find yourself making plans anyway. Breakfast at ten, downtown. He'll pick you up.

It's just as fun as the first one, but guilt swirls your chest as if happiness is betrayal. Is it still called impostor syndrome if you're genuinely not good enough? You feel like a fraud. You feel like a liar.

You cancel on plans of a third date, lying through your teeth that you just aren't interested, and are met with words of reassurance. It makes you feel worse, so you spend the next consecutive days agonizing over it. Have you made a fatal error? Have you squashed something that could have been beautiful?

It's not like this is anything new. You squash everything, stomp it to the roots and leave nothing left. It's the only thing that you know how to do. You know to be skittish, to choose both fight and flight simultaneously, to leave before you get left. But you don't _want _to leave him, not when you really think about it. The weekend that you spend not talking to him absolutely sucks. You bemoan over it, deem it better to leave things where you are so that you don't hurt him even more. Reaching out again would be playing mind games, right? But you recognize the silence for what it is - another missed opportunity of your own making. And maybe, just maybe, this self-flagellation shtick is getting old. Maybe you deserve a little happiness too.

You talk to a friend and another and another and another, getting all of the same advice with a few insults embedded in the midst. You type out a _hey, I changed my mind _and a _hey, I was stupid _and a hundred more excuses, but you delete all of them. You settle on _hey, I was scared, _and ask if he wants to get dinner that week. Sending that text is one of the scariest things that you've done since hauling ass out here in the first place, but you do it, bracing for impact - and he responds with a yes.

He picks you up outside of your apartment and you walk. He tells you that he wants to go at your pace, no matter how slow it is. He tells you about his friends and his family and his hometown and your mouth doesn't feel dry at all. You laugh, _free, _in a way you haven't felt in weeks. You're so tired of wearing yourself down for others' benefits, of sacrificing sleep and love and studying hours, but he doesn't seem like the type to make you do any of that. When he walks you back to your door, right where he'd picked you up, it's obvious that he's waiting to see if you'll kiss him, but he doesn't make the move himself. It feels weird, the idea of kissing him in front of the bystanders walking by your building and the girl at the front desk who saw you fall in and out of faux-love with somebody else, so you hug him instead. He laughs something giddy and pure and says that it's more than okay, that it's actually great.

Your new daily routine is so much more uncomplicated than the last. It doesn't feel like a consistent sacrifice, and you don't have to be a martyr. You're just someone who likes spending time with somebody that likes spending time with you.

And that's enough. That's more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> you deserve better than someone who won't tell you what they want.


End file.
